Main menu

Tag Archives: dna

For my blogging class, we were supposed to post a “spring break update.”

Unfortunately, this will be nearly impossible for me. Why?

That’s why. I got sick the day before spring break started. I had to leave class early and endure a week’s worth of sickness and pain and death.

Well, maybe not death, but it was close. It definitely felt like death. I lost a total of 11 pounds. Don’t worry, I quickly gained it all back in the last few days of break, which I admit I spent freely doing nothing. This was completely contrary to my original plan for spring break: I had each day planned for what I was going to catch up on. AND! I was going to start two of my end-of-the-semester research projects. Alas, this didn’t happen.

And so, my friends, you see why it’s impossible for me to do a spring break update. I was sick the entire time, and therefore I wasn’t even eating. I couldn’t possibly update you on any delicious food I had, seeing as I had none.

What I can update you on is how I’m healing my body from the flu/stomach virus.

Thursday, when I finally began feeling a little better (6 days after I began with chills and a fever), I went to replenish my food supply. Since I eat whole foods, I literally had nothing to eat: it had all gone bad. My first priority was to make bone broth.

What’s bone broth? Bone broth is cooked down bones (from any animal) in soup form. If you remember the gelatin post, it’s essentially the same thing, just in a different form. Cooking down bones is the purest and most raw way to obtain all-important gelatin. In addition, bone broth is essential in recovering from micronutrient deficiencies. Importantly, as the Paleo Mom explains, bone broth contains two important amino acids: glycine and proline. Your body can make these two amino acids, but it’s much more energy efficient to consume them.

Everyone has a different bone broth recipe. Here is what I put in mine:

1.5 pounds bone marrow

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

3 organic carrots

3 organic celery stalks

3 parsnips

3 handfuls of bok choy, stems removed

1/2 spanish onion

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

1 teaspoon salt

.5 teaspoon black pepper

If you can’t tell, I like to use repetitive measurements because it helps me remember them better. Because I used bone marrow (remember that you can use any animal bones, and I have heard that chicken or beef knuckles are best), my broth turned out quite fatty. I let it sit in the fridge overnight in a container and removed the solidified fat from the top. The fat is completely edible, but it’s honestly too much for my palate. I love my fats, but this stuff is really fatty.

The layer of fat that accumulated on my bone broth

After scraping this layer off, I was left with delicious, healthy broth.

Drinking this broth is an important step in helping to fight my fatigue. Last week, Charlie helped me cut sections of my hair to send off for a DNA sample. This test costs a lot of money, but it might reveal an answer that I just can’t figure out; or, it might reveal something my doctors just aren’t seeing.

Even if you don’t have health problems, I encourage everyone to start living a healthy lifestyle, what ever that choice may be. If it makes you feel good: do it, eat it, live it. If it doesn’t then don’t. If bone broth makes you happy, drink it. If it doesn’t, don’t. Always be open to trying something new.